Mobile Graphics Acceleration:Past, Present and Future

Petri Nordlund, Bitboys

Agenda

• Bitboys

• Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration?

• Brief History of Mobile Graphics Acceleration

• Mobile Graphics Hardware Vendors

• The Future

• Demos

Bitboys

Bitboys Fact Sheet

• Graphics hardware solutions company established in 1991

• Offices in Espoo and Noormarkku, Finland

• Number of staff: 41

• Privately owned by management and investors

- Cipio Partners (London, Munich)

- Pohjola (Finland)

- 4 smaller Finnish investors

• Financially stable, profitable and growing

- Turnover 2003: 2,9 (0,5) M eur

- Turnover 2004: 4,7 (1,6) M eur

Bitboys Products

• Bitboys G12 - OpenVG 1.0 vector graphics accelerator

• Bitboys G34 - OpenGL ES 1.1 3D graphics accelerator

• Bitboys G40 - OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics accelerator

• Bitboys products are licensed tosemiconductor and mobile phonemanufacturers as IP (IntellectualProperty) cores

• Bitboys cores are integrated into theSoC (System-on-Chip) semiconductorproducts manufactured by the licensorof Bitboys technology

Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration?

Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration?

• By the end of this decade

- Mobile gaming becomes serious business

- Several new companies will enter the digital entertainment business

• Games have to look good and play slick

- Requires an integrated hardware graphics processor

• Given that an average mobile phone chipset already incorporates tens of IP cores, a graphics processor is relatively inexpensive addition

- On the other hand, already almost 10% of the silicon real-estate is reserved for graphics rendering

Why Mobile Graphics Acceleration?

• The need for graphics acceleration on mobile phones is driven by

- Need to differentiate

- Need to look good, anything visual sells

- Games need it, developers want it to create better content

- User interfaces need to be more responsive and easier to use

- All other computing platforms have it already

• Soon more graphics processors will be shipped on mobile phones than PCs

- In performance, mobile graphics hardware is five years behind PCs

2D, 3D and Vector Graphics

• The focus on PC graphics hardware is on 3D graphics

- On mobiles, 2D bitmap and vector graphics have even a stronger pull on the market

• Vector graphics

- Used for graphical user interfaces, games, applications and maps

- Vector graphics hardware is easy and cost-effective to integrate

- Provides content scalability and small content size

- Standardized APIs

- OpenVG 1.0 (low-level rendering API)

- SVG (file format)

- Flash Lite (from Macromedia)

Content Examples

Brief History of MobileGraphics Acceleration

The Brief History

• 2002 - “Year 0”- No mobile graphics API standards available- Basically no market for mobile graphics hardware- Imagination introduces PowerVR MBX graphics processor

• 2003 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 1.0 API- Bitboys introduces the G10 graphics processor- ATI and NVIDIA enter the handheld graphics processor market- First serious deals signed

• 2004 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 1.1 API- Bitboys introduces the G34 and G40 graphics processors- All major semiconductor vendors and mobile phone

manufactures include 3D graphics acceleration on their roadmaps

• 2005 - Khronos introduces the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, which supports vertex

and pixel shaders- Khronos introduces the OpenVG 1.0 for vector graphics

rendering- Bitboys introduces the G12 graphics processor

The API Standards

• OpenGL ES 1.1- Fixed-function (non-programmable) 3D graphics API- An embedded subset of the OpenGL 1.5 standard

• OpenGL ES 2.0- Programmable 3D graphics API, vertex shaders and pixel shaders- Includes OpenGL Shading Language (a subset)- An embedded subset of the OpenGL 2.0 standard

• OpenGL ES EGL- Interface between OpenVG/OpenGL ES APIs and the OS windowing

system- Similar to WGL in PC Windows environment

• OpenVG 1.0- Low-level API for 2D vector graphics

• Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2ME™- A retained and immediate mode 3D API for Java environment

• Microsoft Direct3D Mobile- Part of Windows CE 5.0- Similar to Direct3D on PC Windows

Currently Available Devices

• Basically all devices with 3D graphics hardware accelerators have been introduced during the past two years

• Handheld gaming devices leading the pack- Sony PSP (Sony proprietary)- Gizmondo (NVIDIA GoForce 3D)

• A small selection of phones available- Mitsubishi D504i (DoCoMo)- LG SV360 (ATI Imageon)- Samsung SPH-G1000 (Samsung 3D hardware?)

• PDAs- Dell Axim X50v (Imagination MBX)- Samsung SPH-M7000 (Imagination MBX)

Device Gallery

Mitsubishi D504iSony PSP

LG SV360

Samsung SPH-G1000 Samsung SPH-M7000 Dell Axim X50v

Mobile Graphics Hardware Vendors

The Players

• The major players are:

- ATI Canada

- Bitboys Finland

- Falanx Microsystems Norway

- Imagination Technologies UK

- Mitsubishi Japan

- NVIDIA US

• All companies of 3D graphics hardware IP for handheld devices

- ATI and NVIDIA also offer multimedia chips, with integrated 3D graphics hardware

Typical Features

• 2D graphics- BitBlt, fill, raster operations

• Vector graphics- Native vector graphics support or implementation over the 3D

pipeline- Polygon rasterization with anti-aliasing- Texturing and gradients (linear and radial)

• 3D graphics- Geometry processing in hardware - Rasterization, supersample or multisample anti-aliasing- Two textures / pixel- Bilinear and trilinear texture filtering- Texture decompression- OpenGL ES 1.x pixel pipeline

Typical Performance

• Geometry performance

- 1-3M triangles/s

- Realistically 15-20k polygons/frame

• Pixel processing

- 1 pixel per clock cycle => 100-200M pixels/second

- Realistically 5 layers of pixels on QVGA/VGA resolution

• Available memory bandwidth and power consumption are the two biggest limiting factors

The Future

Displays and CPU

• Displays

- Expect to see QVGA resolution displays next year on many phone models

- Some gaming phones will use horizontal displays

- VGA resolution in 2008

• CPU

- 300 MHz ARM CPUs in 2006

- 600 MHz ARM CPUs in 2007-2008

- Close to 1 GHz in 2008 with the next ARM Cortex family CPUs

Mobile Graphics Hardware

• Still expecting a breakthrough in 2006 timeframe

- Several interesting product announcements made this year

- Expect graphics hardware in smartphones/gaming phones by the end of the next year

• Vector graphics acceleration will be widely adopted

• Will take until 2007-2008 for graphics hardware to find its way to the high-volume basic phones

• Expect full vertex and pixel shader support in 2007 with OpenGL ES 2.0

• Expect robust performance

Mobile Gaming

• Consolidation of:- Gaming platforms- Mobile game vendors

• Battle over gaming platforms- DoCoMo i-mode- Nokia N-Gage- Qualcomm’s BREW- Symbian OS

• Casual and branded games will generatethe largest revenue

• Content delivery may no longer be an issue- Handset vendors have recognized the problem

and will provide solutions – WiFi, memory cards, …

User interfaces

• Vector graphics and 3D graphics user interfaces

- The main operating system GUI

- Application specific user interfaces

• Expect:

- Animated backgrounds

- Animated icons

- Transparent windows

- Customized skins

- 30FPS!

Demo Time!